Saturday, April 28, 2012

NSEERS

So the past few weeks have been interesting, and I definitely have learned a lot. Although being in an office all day is very different from what I am used to, I actually really enjoy it. This week I mostly wrote letters to HKAM clients. Most of them were regarding their case status and which steps are needed to proceed with their immigration journey. It is interesting to see how people from different countries are dealing with their emigration to the US. Some of them are very successful, while others unfortunately have major difficulties to deal with. It is quite sad that for a person with children Immigration is almost 2X as hard. Families are often ripped apart from the difficulty of Immigrating to the US. This is widely seen in our history as well. For example int he case of the Irish, many people came to the US to never see their families ever again, only to live under harsh and undesirable conditions. In a sense sometimes I feel like Immigration is extremely biased towards certain races. For example in my fiances immigration case, he had to wait much longer than most people did because he was a Muslim male from the Middle East. To most Americans, this should happen especially after the attacks on 9/11, but it is important to note that by going the extra mile in excluding ME men, the department of justice and other governing bodies are essentially implying that all terrorists come from the middle east, which most people know is not true. Under the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which was established by the department of Justice, men between the ages of 16 and 25 from certain ME countries and North Korea, are given special registration requirements upon application to immigrate to the US. These guidelines seem quite ridiculous to me especially because of the feats we have made against racial profiling in the past. Furthermore, to know that this type of state sanctioned racial profiling has sort of been swept under the rug quite frankly bothers me. It brings me back to when I had read Edward Said's Orientalism (1977), in that effect our government is treating entire groups of people differently based on where they came from, rather than their personal actions. The government has clearly constructed the idea of the "other" amongst Middle Eastern immigrants, which completely dismantles the foundations that we pride ourselves on as Americans today. The good news is this law was ended in April 2011, but it is very important to understand that this type of profiling happened during our supposed "modern times".